As we've gained some traction in interest via our new Facebook page as well as some interest via inquiries on these forums, I figured I might as well start a topic here for everyone who's interested to interact with me and provide input and feedback concerning Shadow Sovereignty. First, I'll give you the run-down:

Incendiactive is proud to present its very first public project - Shadow Sovereignty, a 100% free-to-play MMORPG. Set at the start of the 7th century of the 1st era - an era characterized by a heavy mix of traditional living and the infancy of technology powered and shaped by magic - Shadow Sovereignty is designed to be a classic, nostaialgic experience from the start. The story takes place primarily in the realm of Cadreinth, a young world that has experienced peace since the earliest record of life. When dark beings stir in the shadows and an unseen evil awakens, who is to stand for the innocent against the growing darkness?

Two years ago this past November, a group of friends and myself got together with an idea for a multiplayer game that would stand out; a game that could build a truly dedicated fan-base and succeed no matter how few or how many people played. Each of us had played several different MORPGs and MMORPGs, and had the same complaints as well as unique ones across the board. Over the following months, the game continually changed and evolved as we weeded our way through feature after feature, until finally in November of 2014, a consistent idea fully materialized. We wanted a game that all of us would enjoy, despite the fact among us were elite raiders, hardcore role-players, and casuals. We were also tired of seeing only three options otherwise in the market: subscription, pay-to-win, or buy-to-play.

However, what truly drove us to really push the project to production was our passion for gaming and our love of creativity. Every one of us working on the project is a creative mind in some form, and we all wanted a way to incorporate our creativity into something we could do for ourselves and possibly anybody else who wanted to be a part of something great. Thusly, Shadow Sovereignty was born.

After a full year of switching around engines and software, as well as numerous losses of data and visionary restarts, we are finally proud to announce that the new Shadow Sovereignty v0.0.1 is being created in Torque 3D, on a Linux host, using all open-source software. Development is going fairly smoothly as planned, and we have announced on our Facebook page the planned date for the first pre-alpha public test version to go live January 1st, 2016.

Of course, we wouldn't be posting this if the project were only an idea. We do have one of the first two parts of the game that the player will encounter for the first demo, known in the common tongue as The Vale of Stone. At the moment, we do not have new screenshots ready. However, in the next day or two I will be posting some in reply to this topic, as several of us have gotten together in one location to work at getting content ready to bring our IndieDB page back to life and generate some interest everywhere we can.

We do have a post over in the "looking for" section of these forums, please head over there, to our Facebook or Twitter, or message us here if you have any questions or are interested in helping us finish making our vision come alive for everyone!

--Jonah KarauIncendiactiveCommunity Manager

Last edited by Incendiactive on Thu Apr 28, 2016 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

Here are the screenshots we have at the moment. Since we've updated from version 2.0 to 3.8, our trees in the Vale of Stone no longer work, so we removed them (please don't mind the lack of trees at the moment in such shots) and we're still working on improving textures and models, as well as replacing textures in the main area. Right now we're using all open source textures and other assets besides music (we have a composer), and have stand-ins.The Highlands and Coastal area will tie into the second part of the Highlands. It's taking a lot more work than we thought trying to update all of our scripts and source edits, and so screenshots took a bit of a backseat. Hopefully that will be less of an issue now!

WIP main menu with default buttons:

Vale of Stone - Coastal area

Vale of Stone - Highlands

Vale of Stone - A'gu 'dur Lakeshore 1

Vale of Stone - A'gu 'dur Lake to distance

I'll try to get some more screenshots up for you guys with actual fixed textures more of the environment the way it should be!

--Jonah KarauIncendiactiveCommunity Manager

Last edited by Incendiactive on Thu Apr 28, 2016 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

We've got a fairly minor update ready to share with you. Version 0.0.1c now holds both instances currently created in the same level, and we're working on getting zoning and LoDs working as intended there. We've also got some of the textures of one building fixed, as well as improving other various textures and models already in the game. We were able to completely fix the trees as well as get collision boxes working for the buildings.

Here's a screenshot of the improved area so far:

As always we're still looking for help in asset and art creation. Let us know if you'd like to help by sending us a message here on the Torque 3D forums!

--Jonah KarauIncendiactiveCommunity Manager

Last edited by Incendiactive on Thu Apr 28, 2016 6:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

I imagine it's on the to-do list, but having stuff to break up the terrain textures tends to make the scene feel more 'complete'.So embedding large boulder meshes along cliffs, or towney things like buckets, market stands and the like in your towns can go a long way to make the place feel less artifical

JeffR That is a good point, and it's some of what I'm working on for the next version update. Sadly, as I'm not a 3D modeler by trade, it takes a long time to get things made to help fill up the world. This mostly shows in texturing models and meshes that I make, earlier you could see I failed at mapping a few of the textures!

The other big thing that I'm trying to find help with is a generic replacement model not unlike what used to be in TGE and what is in UE4, rather than the default soldier model, since the game is a fantasy RPG and we'd like to not give any false impressions with the first demo.

Besides that, I'll also be adding grass and small plants and bushes, as well as other kinds of trees and some retextured rock meshes all around. A lot of cosmetic stuff for the next update I think.

Oh, and zones ... I cannot get the included zone feature object to grow large enough to put the instances inside of it without shrinking that instance, which brings the scale down. If anyone knows anything I could do for that, I'll gladly listen!